If I have learned anything in the past few years, it is to pay attention to the quality of my mind (both thoughts and feelings) while I am in the studio. In fits and starts I am learning to recognize when I am not really ready to paint and I have developed a variety of studio practices that serve, in the words of John Cage, to sober and quiet the mind. This enables me to slow down and focus myself before picking up the brush. When I am in the right frame of mind for painting, I move with an energy of open awareness, where possibility and delight move forward and concrete goals and ideas quietly take their seats off stage. Being aware of the state of one’s mind and developing the capacity to shift one’s awareness is perhaps one of the greatest challenges of being human.

Earlier this year I completed a collaborative project with dancer and choreographer Hope Mohr, one of the many things I was reminded of while working with Hope and the other dancers was the power of the body to sober and quiet the mind. In her most recent blog post, Hope writes about this very thing in her own eloquent way. Here is an excerpt:

For various reasons and to varying degrees, we all hide out in overgrown mental functioning. This is what graphic novelist Alison Bechdel calls “a fantasy of self-sufficiency.” We relate to our intellect like a parent. We pretend that the intellect can protect us from what we fear. But allowing intellect to drive the creative process closes off the possibility of being transformed by the creative process itself. If we control the process, how can it transform us?

— http://www.hopemohr.org/blog/2015/4/5/body-based-inquiry

And this:

“Listening to the body can be subversive. I’m not talking about sexual desires, although certainly those can be radicalizing if followed. I’m speaking more generally about listening to the body as distinct from the brain. Listening to the body subverts the disconnection of body from brain or, in other words, soma from psyche. When creative process is rooted in body-based expression, it subverts a culture warped by the Cartesian fallacy. When we make from an intuitive place, we unmake the dominant culture. We slow down. We pay attention. We open up to ourselves and each other.

Why do I aspire to this way of working? Because I like the results. Intuitive, body-based creative process can achieve results impossible to replicate with the tools of the conscious mind. And part of the reason I make art is a longing to be transformed. Intuitive, body-based creative process changes me.”